Turning Afghanistan Into Colombia

I highly recommend Peter Bergan and Sameer Lalwani's article, "The War on Poppies" about the failure of U.S. opium eradication efforts in Afghanistan.

It's clear that we have learned no lessons from 40 years of failure in Colombia. We could have made a real difference in Afghanistan after we overthrew the Taliban. We chose not to so we could go after Saddam Hussein. In the following years, Afghanistan has remained unstable, the condition of women has barely improved outside Kabul, and the Taliban remain a powerful force in the countryside.

If you are an Afghan farmer, what are you supposed to do other than grow opium? Are they supposed to care that the heroin market in the West is insatiable? Why should they? Particularly when the United States does not develop a realistic alternative for them. Plus, drug eradication efforts have never proved successful. Has the U.S. stopped marijuana farms in southern Oregon and northern California from decades of aerial surveillance? Have even made the slightest indentation in crystal meth? What has our coca eradication policies done to Colombia and the other Andean nations? And now the war on poppies is bringing increased violence to the Afghan countryside and binding closer ties between the Taliban and local farmers.

Bergen and Lalwani write,

"What's more, our policy is not effective. Though the U.S. spends about the same amount on counter-narcotics activities in Afghanistan annually as all Afghan poppy farmers combined take home in a year, our policies have not prevented record-setting poppy crops from springing up with every succeeding year, nor have they prevented Afghanistan from becoming a quasi-narcostate where corruption is rampant. Last week's U.N. report said Afghanistan continues to be the center of the world's heroin trade, accounting for 93% of global opium production. It noted a 17% spike in poppy cultivation in the last year, on the heels of a record 59% rise the year before.

The U.S. government, in short, is deeply committed to an unsuccessful drug policy that helps its enemies. The Taliban derives not only substantial financial benefits from the opium trade, according to U.S. military officials in Afghanistan, but wins political benefits from its supportive stance on poppy growing, masterfully exploiting situations in which U.S.-sponsored eradication forces are pitted against poor farmers."

Good job America!

What could we do differently? How could the United States actually cut into opium production in an effective manner. To start with Bergan and Lalwani suggest

The State Department strategy misses the forest for the trees. The priority of the United States and NATO should be first to thwart the Taliban insurgency while bettering the lives of typical Afghans through significant economic and reconstruction efforts to win hearts and minds. Doing nothing on the poppy front would do more to achieve this goal than the counterproductive eradication path the U.S. currently pursues. The U.S. should adopt a "first do no harm" policy that temporarily suspends eradication while implementing a promising portfolio of new initiatives to build up alternatives for farmers.

To begin with, the U.S. needs to invest in building up the legitimate Afghan economy. Though poppy fetches much higher prices than most other crops, subsidies, price supports and seeds for alternative crops should be offered to offset that price gap. Because other crops often face pitfalls such as the absence of distributors, domestic demand or consistent prices abroad, the international community should help Kabul set up an agency, modeled on the Canadian Wheat Board, that would purchase crops from farmers at consistent prices, and market and distribute them internationally. The U.S. and other NATO countries should open their markets and extend trade preferences to Afghan agricultural products and handicrafts.

They suggest several other possible solutions as well. Read the whole thing.